Split panes & layouts

Every Terminal tab can hold up to eight panes side by side, like tmux or Windows Terminal. Each pane runs its own shell, SSH session or agent, and nothing restarts when you split, resize, zoom or rearrange: the programs keep running.

Split a pane

You can split the focused pane from several places:

Split right puts the new pane to the right of the current one; Split down puts it below. The new pane gets the focus and starts in the folder of the pane it was split from.

The buttons and menu items open Split with…, where you choose what the new pane runs. The keyboard shortcuts skip the picker and open the same program as the current pane.

Split with…

Split right with… and Split down with… is a small searchable list:

1. Same as this pane, first and already selected, so Enter duplicates the pane. Its right side names what the pane runs.
2. Agents: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor CLI, Grok and your own profiles. An agent that is not installed shows Not installed; picking it opens the install hint instead of a pane that cannot start.
3. Shells: the local shells on this computer.

Type to filter, ↑/↓ to move, Enter to pick. Esc closes the list and returns you to the button that opened it. This is how you run a different agent in each pane: split, then pick Codex next to Claude Code.

A duplicated agent starts fresh. If the pane was a resumed conversation (see Saved layouts), the split does not resume the same conversation a second time.

When a pane cannot be split

• A tab holds at most 8 panes ("Up to 8 panes per tab").
• A pane must have room for two: at least 240 px wide for a right split and 96 px tall for a down split. Otherwise the button says "Not enough room to split this pane".
• The AI tab cannot be split.

Disabled buttons stay visible, and their tooltip gives the reason. If you open an agent or shell into a split that no longer fits, Apiboo opens it in a new tab instead and tells you: "There was no room for another pane, so it opened in a new tab."

Resize panes

Between two panes is a divider:

• Drag it to change the sizes. A pane can take between 10 % and 90 % of the split.
• Double-click it to share the space 50/50 again.
• With the keyboard: press Tab until the divider is focused, then use the arrow keys to move it by 2 %, Shift+arrow by 10 %, and Home or Enter to reset it to 50/50.

To resize the focused pane without touching a divider, press Alt+Shift+arrow (Mac: ⌥+⌘+⇧+arrow). It moves the nearest divider in that direction by 2 %.

Once a split, a close, a zoom or a drag has finished, every pane fits itself to its new size and tells its program, so nothing is cut off under the next pane's header.

Move between panes

The focused pane has a grey ring, and what you type goes there. To move the focus:

• click in a pane;
• Alt+arrow (Mac: ⌥+⌘+arrow) moves to the pane in that direction;
• Alt+Shift+O (Mac: ⌘+]) moves to the next pane, in reading order, and wraps around. On a Mac, ⌘+[ goes to the previous one.

Zoom a pane

Zoom shows one pane over the whole tab while the others keep running behind it.

• Click Zoom pane in the pane's header, choose it from the header's right-click menu, or press Ctrl+Shift+Enter (Mac: ⌘+⇧+Enter).
• The header then shows "Zoomed · 2 hidden" (the number of hidden panes).
• Press the shortcut again or click Restore layout to bring the others back. Moving to a neighbouring pane with Alt+arrow, resizing or splitting also ends the zoom.

The pane header

A pane shows a slim header when there is more than one pane, when it runs an agent, or when its program has ended. A lone shell looks just like a plain terminal. The header shows:

• the status dot and the pane's icon and title;
• the current folder's name (hover it for the full path);
• chips: Broadcast while broadcasting, "Zoomed · N hidden", and MCP or MCP off for agents (see Attach Apiboo MCP);
• the buttons Split right, Split down, Zoom pane and Close pane.

Right-click the header for Split right…, Split down…, Zoom pane / Restore layout, Restart, Copy working directory and Close pane.

Close panes

• Close pane in the header, or Ctrl+Shift+W (Mac: ⌘+⇧+W), closes the focused pane and ends its program.
• Close other panes in the tab's right-click menu keeps only the focused pane.
• Closing the last pane closes the tab.

The focus goes back to the pane you used before. A pane can also close itself when its program ends; see Pane status and the exit bar.

Broadcast input

Broadcast sends what you type in the focused pane to every pane of the tab at once, for example to run the same command on several servers.

1. Split the tab first. With one pane the button says "Split the tab first — broadcast types into every pane".
2. Click Broadcast input to all panes in the tab bar, or choose it from the tab's right-click menu.
3. The broadcasting panes get an amber ring and a Broadcast chip, and the tab shows a broadcast mark.
4. Click the button again (or Stop broadcasting input) to stop.

Only panes that are running receive the keystrokes. If an agent is running in one of the panes, Apiboo warns you for a few seconds, for example "Keystrokes go to all 3 panes, including Claude Code". Broadcast is not available in the AI tab and turns off when the tab is back to one pane.

Presets

Layouts (the grid button in the tab bar) starts with five Presets that reshape the current tab:

Your running panes keep their places in reading order. If the preset has more places, the new ones get the default shell. If it has fewer, Apiboo asks first, for example "Apply “2 columns”?" with "This closes 1 pane(s): Codex. Their programs end."

Saved layouts

A saved layout remembers a tab's arrangement and what runs in each pane, so you can reopen your usual setup, for example Claude Code next to Codex and a dev-server shell, in one click.

To save one:

1. Choose Save layout… at the bottom of Layouts, or in the tab's right-click menu.
2. Give it a Name. The dialog shows a thumbnail and the list of panes it will store.

3. Choose the options:

   • Remember working directories: each pane reopens in the folder it is in now.
   • Resume agent conversations when opened: agents continue their last conversation, for example claude --continue. This happens once per agent and folder, so two Claude Code panes in the same folder do not both resume the same conversation.
4. Click Save.

A layout stores the shape, and for each pane its agent, shell or SSH connection, its folder and its name. It never stores output, environment values or tokens.

To use your layouts:

• Open: click it under Saved in Layouts, or on the start screen. It always opens in a new tab and never touches your running panes.
• Rename: the pencil next to it.
• Delete: the bin next to it. A toast "Layout deleted" offers Undo for 5 seconds.

If an agent profile used in a layout no longer exists, that pane opens with a shell and Apiboo names what it replaced. A pane with no remembered folder starts in the default folder (see The working directory). Layouts are stored for your account on this device only.

Shortcuts

The pane shortcuts work while the focus is in the Terminal. They use the physical key, so Alt+Shift++ also works on a German keyboard. On Windows and Linux they follow Windows Terminal; on a Mac they follow iTerm2.

Moving, resizing, next/previous pane and zoom only act when the tab has more than one pane. For the splits, the + and - keys of the number pad work too. The shortcuts cannot be changed. All Apiboo shortcuts are on Keyboard shortcuts.